The conditions under which young workers find their first real post-graduation jobs are both very important for the young's future careers and insufficiently known given their public policy implications. To study these conditions, and in particular the role played by networks, we use a Swedish...

Unemployment insurance systems include monitoring of unemployed workers and punitive sanctions if job search requirements are violated. We analyze the effect of sanctions on the ensuing job quality, notably on wage rates and hours worked, and we examine how often a sanction leads to a lower...

In this paper we investigate whether a relaxation in seniority rules (the "last-in-first-out"-principle) had any effect on firms' employment behaviour. Seniority rules exist in several countries and, like Sweden, most European countries have a more lenient employment protection for firms below a...

This study reports the results from a repeat survey among managers in Swedish manufacturing, designed to explore how a severe and prolonged macroeconomic shock affects wage rigidity and unemployment. Our second survey was conducted in 1998, when the unemployment rate was much higher, and the...

The Swedish experiences of the 1990s provide a unique example of how largescale active labour market programmes (ALMPs) have been used as a means to fight high unemployment. This paper discusses the mechanisms through which ALMPs affect (un)employment and surveys the empirical studies of the...

This paper considers the optimal hiring strategy of a firm that is unable to observe the productive abilities of all its applicants. Whom the firm considers as hireable, will depend crucially on the extent to which the firm can use its wage setting to mirror productivity differences. However,...

This paper investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital....

This paper analyses recruitment practices to Samhall, a state-owned company that provides sheltered employment for individuals with severe work disabilities. Besides providing employment for disabled workers and rehabilitating them to employment outside Samhall, the company is expected to...

Unemployment immediately upon graduation is associated with substantial and permanent future earnings losses. Even for very short unemployment spells the estimated earnings losses are statistically significant. These results are stable for the inclusion of a rich set of observable control...

Amongst the active labor market policy programs for the unemployed in Sweden, the vocational employment training program is the most ambitious and expensive. We analyze its effect on the individual transition rate from unemployment to employment using a unique set of administrative data and a...